After our fish & chips lunch, we hustled back over the Albert Dock for our second Beatle tour of the day. We didn’t have a lot of time in Liverpool – if we’d had more, I would have scheduled the Beatle tours on different days. It was a lot to ask of a baby. But, we had exactly one full day, so the same day it was.

They had full sized tour buses (so a lot more people than the little shuttle from the morning). Young kids (under 2) were again free, though you had to call or email and they’d give you a ticket. We brought our carseat again. The tour took you through Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, past all four childhood homes (though not in), past the art college – and it was supposed to go past where the Woolton Church Fete was (which is where John and Paul met for the first time), but there was construction. The bus leaves you off at the Cavern Club. And you could choose to go in or not.

Some of the stops we visited, we could go off the bus to take pictures. I thought they left sufficient time for that at each stop. The tour guide told stories and Beatles music was played intermittently.
Elena happy screamed some, and I tried to keep her mouth stuff with teething biscuits to keep her quiet. Doug and I switched off sitting next to her to keep her entertained. We did our best anyway!

The tour started off driving by the house where Ringo was born, though we couldn’t get off the bus.

We also drove by a later house that Ringo lived in:

Ringo was easily the poorest and least educated of the Beatles (the latter because he’d had more than one serious illness as a child and spent a great deal of time in the hospital).

We also drove by this:

Our first stop where we could get off, was Penny Lane!!

Barber shop!

Next up was the house where George grew up! We couldn’t go in, but we were able to get pics in front of it!

This was a bummer.

Next was Strawberry Field!

We drove by John’s house:

And got out a Paul’s house:

Paul’s house is on Forthlin Road:

Liverpool Art College:

And then, the Cavern, which is on Mathew Street. The current Cavern is a rebuild right next to where the original was. It’s the same dimension and bricks as the original, and there is a marker where the original was.

We took turns going it. I figured it wasn’t baby friendly and there were a ton of stairs. So I went into get a few souvenirs first and then I made Doug go in and see it.

The statue of this lady marks where the original Cavern Club was.

Well, right behind her.

They have a nice representation of where the door was:

They were also able to pinpoint the location from this photo, taken from the doorway of the Cavern. You can see across the street, on the right, a scuffed brick, which serves as a marker.

Then we walked back to the dock towards the hotel.

We were pretty worn out, but across from the Cavern, I hear there is a good museum that Roar Best donated/lent a lot of stuff to. And there are other clubs the Beatles played at, like the Casbah, I believe, that I think Roar (IIRC) used to give tours of. In any case, though there is a wealth of Beatles museums and other stuff, we had such limited time, and I was grateful to have a chance to see any of it!

We hung out at the hotel for a while and gave Elena the chance to crawl around, watch some Moana…

And then ventured back out for dinner. We were pretty wiped from intensive baby wrangling all day, so I almost didn’t want to have to wrangle her through dinner, but we found a place on the dock that looked good and just went for it. She did pretty well at dinner and they had my fav Grapefruit beer.

This platter had scotch eggs and my fav thing I ate at the place, a red leister cheese that was fantastic.

Chicken skewer and fries:

Shrimp salad:

After dinner we walked along the Mersey and I marveled that I was there. We had a pretty sunset too.

This sculpture was of Billy Fury:

And then it was back to our hotel to relax and pack up, because we were leaving in the morning, back to the train, this time the destination was London! Also, it was pouring the next morning, so I was so glad the time we’d had in Liverpool was so nice. I was surprised by how much I liked the city and I’d love to come back and spend more time.

I forgot to mention how fun it was to hear so many Liverpudlian accents – since they are so strongly affiliated with the Beatles, it’s easy to forget there’s a whole city of people who have the same accent.